IIM Vizag gets decision science and analytics lab – Times of India

The IDeAL is a ‘Centre of Excellence’ dedicated to inter-disciplinary research. Director, IIM-Vizag, Prof M Chandrasekhar said that IDeAL would play a vital role in bringing industry, government, and academia together to address socio-economic issues of interdisciplinary nature, particularly being faced by aspirational districts like Visakhapatnam.

Prof Chandrasekhar elaborated that the aim of IDeAL is to act as a platform for conceptualizing, inventing, building, and valorising products, and service innovations. “IIM-V being a public-spirited and public-funded institution, the goal is to come up with disruptive and transformative innovations that serve a larger public purpose and the public good,” added the IIM-Vizag director.

The inauguration of the Lab was graced by industry leader Dr Jai Ganesh, senior vice president & head of the Mphasis research and innovation center (NEXT Labs). Dr Ganesh talked about the interplay of data sciences, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in the transformation of industry and society at large. He highlighted the importance of aspects like explainability and auditability of decision science models and solutions, for them to gain greater acceptance among the beneficiaries.

Chairman, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Prof Parthasarathy Ramachandran, in his address, spoke about current research challenges in inter-disciplinary decision sciences, such as collection, compilation, collation of big data; engagement and communicating with stakeholders, as well as the need for ensuring equity, equality, and ethics in the use and interpretation of data.

Prof Nagadevara, in his inaugural address, highlighted the interdisciplinarity of decision sciences and how even areas like ‘organization behaviour’ could benefit immensely from analytics. He emphasized the importance of developing a use-case repository, which is only possible through deep engagement with the industry. “The Lab could act as a trusted third-party among various players, resolving issues of confidentiality. The current pandemic situation has the silver lining of being a good ground for developing descriptive, diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive analytics in the healthcare space,” said Prof Nagadevara.

Head of the IDeAL at IIM Visakhapatnam, Dr. Shivshanker Singh Patel, explained how the Lab would deploy mathematical optimisation and data science as the core for modelling and analysis.” It would work at the intersection of mathematics, statistics, operations research, economics, computer, and social sciences and spawn solutions that address real-life challenges. Extensive use of tools and techniques like artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, cloud computing, graph analytics, game theory, and pervasive computing would be used,” said Dr Patel.